FYLDE Rugby Union Club hopes it has hooked a lifesaving supermarket deal to convert its £450,000 debt into profit.

At a meeting of 100 members on Monday night (August 23), 91 voted in favour of accepting an offer from EH Booth, the Preston-based foodstore chain, to buy one of the four pitches at its Ansdell ground for a new store.

The agreement, however, hangs on whether Booths can win planning permission for the three-acre site, which is by no means certain.

Nevertheless, Arnie Halford, chairman of the club which celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, was upbeat.

"If they can get planning permission it will safeguard the future of this club for ever more," he said. "Booths gave us by far the best offer. It's so necessary that we get this deal, it's a lifeline."

Without it the whole club, including the largest mini and junior rugby programme in the country with 400 youngsters, would be in jeopardy, he said.

The arrival of professionalism in rugby union in the mid-1990s did Fylde RUFC no favours - ticket sales and sponsorship were inadequate to pay top players' salaries, debts mounted, performance declined and last season the club suffered the indignity of relegation from the top-flight Allied Dunbar League to the Jewson National League. EH Booth said in a statement that it had traded in Lytham St Annes for 120 years and had been striving to find a new site for a long time because its existing three stores were inadequate by modern standards.

However, the stores at St Annes and Lytham would continue to operate as at present, while the existing Ansdell store, only 350 yards from the new site, would continue as a non-food shop.

"The proposed new store," said the company, "will provide a sales area of 18,000 sq ft and a tea shop of 1,700 sq ft with parking for 145 cars.

"The company also intends that this car park will operate as a free community car park for the adjoining Woodlands Road shopping centre. There will be a further area for parking 40 cars reserved for the rugby club on match days."

Fylde leisure chairman Coun John Longstaff, a club member, said: "One can only mourn the loss of the open space, but we've got to think of the future of the rugby club. If something isn't done, it could mean the end of the whole club. The Woodlands Ground is historic - it was founded in 1919 as a war memorial - and its survival is of paramount importance."

Woodlands Road shop owners have mixed views. Ansdell Business Association had pressed for the club to opt for a housing developer, but one trader said: "Booths has been in Ansdell for a long time and it's never done the community any harm, they'd just be transferring from one area to another. But until we've got the full facts it's difficult to say how we'd be affected."

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